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Last night, over an extraordinarily good Italian dinner , a buddy of mine explained to my girlfriend and me why ideology doesn't matter, only partisanship. His point was a Kossian one, that the party need not bother itself worrying about conservative Democrats and liberal ones, just whether they're committed to the cause. And at this juncture, that's probably true, the Bush administration's interest in Democratic opinion hovers between "not there" and "are you fucking kidding me". But it presents a pretty large problem: this country, so long as its political parties remain in the state of flat-out warfare they're in, is screwed. Because so long as a single party controls all levers of power, there's no reason for the minority party to negotiate, only to obstruct. Worse, the majority party need never look for counsel, as their inclination is to round up their votes and pass the most ideologically pure legislation they can pen. Caught amidst those dynamics, any issue that Americans care...

So Pete's just sold the last multigrain scone. And it wasn't to me. Those things are like crack! Denied my fix, I have no idea what to do with my Sunday morning. Should probably blog. Or study for finals. Or...bah.

Regular readers know how much I appreciate the Center for American Progress's work -- the tax plan, Think Progress, the Progress Report, Campus Progress, etc, all are excellent examples of what a progressive think tank should be doing. But the one thing a progressive think tank should not be doing is calling itself a progressive think tank. Head on over to CAP's homepage -- once you get past the campaign boilerplate in the banner ("progressive ideas for a strong, just and free America"), you immediately see the topmost (right) sidebar button, a bright orange box direction you to "Progressive Priorities". If you don't click on that, your eyeballs are fairly destined to settle on the facsimile of a Social Security card that rests in the middle of the page promising a "Progressive Guide to the Social Security Debate". Jeez, I wonder which side of the aisle they're on? One lesson Republicans quickly learned was that you get farthest by couching ideology in empiricism, which is to say you...

That Nathan Newman sure knows how to drive home a point : Prosecutors announced they were dropping all criminal charges against Wal-Mart for its use of contractors employing undocumented workers in exchange for paying an $11 million fine, a hefty sounding amount but a pittance for a company with $288.2 billion in sales last year. Let's put it this way-- this is an equivalent financial hit to an average person making $50,000 per year being hit with a $1.90 fine for illegal activity. Wow. I mean, really, Wow. I don't make enough in income to even be taxed, but I spent too long getting books from my room today and got a $40 parking ticket. Let's say, for argument's sake, that I make 20,000 a year. My parking ticket comes to .2% of my imaginary income. Not a whole lot, but remember, all I did was dawdle a bit while my car was in a loading zone. Wal-Mart, having employed illegal workers at wages barely above indentured servitude, was hit with a fine equalling .0038% of their income...

The huge fuss the GOP is making over Terry Schiavo would be understandable, if not respectable, if they could marshal some poll numbers that showed, like on gay marriage, that the issue was a political winner for them. But it's not . 65% of Americans think Schiavo's husband should have the final say on her care, and 87% would not want to be kept alive in her condition. 87%! So in case you were wondering, this isn't cynical, lowest-common-denominator politics being played by the right. This is, instead, more proof that a small band of nuts has the party by the balls, and the leadership is happy to embark on the most insane and quixotic of quests in order to please them. Why the Democrats aren't fanning out into the media repeating the simple refrain that this is none of the government's goddamn business I'll never know. And why they're allowing the GOP to pass legislation making a state court decision eligible for review by a federal court is even stranger, this is exactly the sort of...

If I were Joe Lieberman and highly-respected economist Paul Krugman was criticizing me on misrepresenting a fiscal matter, I think I'd assume his exhaustive understanding of the issue trumped my experience as AG of Connecticut and leave the matter there -- who reads and remembers Paul Krugman anyway? But I am not Joe Lieberman and the guy who is Joe Lieberman clearly believes different tactics are in order. So he wrote in to the New York Times to explain why he was right and Krugman wrong. And that was where it stood until highly respected economist Brad DeLong took up the issue and explained to Lieberman exactly where he was wrong and why his statements made no sense.

Saw Gunner's Palace last night. Like others already have, I recommend you check it out immediately. The film brilliantly succeeds in showing the routinization of life in a war zone, taking pains to neither demonize nor canonize the fresh-faced kids who serve as the stars. Unlike many documentaries, there is no plot, the editors have created no characters and they've taken pains to deny us a satisfying story arc. There's no CG added to create cool visuals, and there are no attempts to tie the movie into a larger political context. It's simply the camera's record of day after day after day in Iraq. Some are good, some are worse. Sometimes the troops show striking patience and compassion, sometimes they throw their quarry on the ground and demand they "shut the fuck up". Sometimes patrols are no more eventful than a stroll to the supermarket, and sometimes mobs form to pelt them with rocks. The soldiers spend a lot of time rapping, playing guitar, play games on the computer, trying to...

Terry Schiavo, if I understand her condition, is an essentially brain dead woman who has languished in a coma for a decade, who shows little to no hope of ever rediscovering consciousness, and who, even if she did snap to attention, would be so desperately brain damaged that she could never function. Her cerebral cortex is gone , replaced by spinal fluid. The main debate about her condition is whether there are a few living tissues left, or whether there are none; in either case, there's nothing near what is required for any level of higher cognitive function. Her condition, short of an act of God, is irreparable, her mental command center gone. And yet, she's been kept alive for 10 years, running through a variety of hospitals and tests and assisted living mechanisms, absorbing an enormous amount of money in what is truly a hopeless cause. So, in the same week that most Republicans voted for Medicaid cuts that would destroy health care for tens of thousands who could use and benefit...

Jesse Lee, writing at the Stakeholder , makes an important point: It's hard to say how many headlines away that day is, but as we've said before, something has certainly shifted. The past week has seen literally a half dozen separate stories written on doubts within the GOP Conference about DeLay. That never happens. And DeLay's bizarre news conference and recent meetings to "assuage" his rank & file are also unusual, and smell of desperation. It's really true. Ten days ago, the DeLay scandals were in the same category as Plame, and the intimidated Medicare actuary, and the 50 other small-bore scandals liberals hoped would undermine the House of Bush but which never seemed find the foundations. At some point in the last week, however, the DeLay's violations, either through new evidence or critical mass of news stories, experienced a phase shift, and now the editorialists are slamming him, the cable shows are dissecting him, the Democrats are planning against him, on and on. That...